Reluctant to leave, Afghans return home after fleeing to Pakistan

Global Business

Many Afghans who fled the fighting in their native country decades ago have built new lives in Pakistan. They set-up businesses, married locally, had children, found jobs or got an education in their adopted country.

But now, time has come to go back to their homeland.

CCTV’s Danial Khan has more.

Reluctant to leave, Afghans return home after fleeing to Pakistan

Reluctant to leave, Afghans return home after fleeing to Pakistan

As the repatriation deadline approaches, a whole new generation of Afghans born in Pakistan is reluctant to return home.

Pakistan became host to the world’s largest protracted refugee population. And after almost four decades, a whole new generation of Afghans born in Pakistan is reluctant to go back.

Pakistan has announced that the 1.4 million registered Afghan refugees in the country must leave by March 31, 2017. Another one million Afghans who are living in Pakistan without documents now face expulsion.

But even the registered refugees, who are returning of their own will, are doubtful of their future.

Some experts believe the road ahead for Afghanistan will be rough.

The UNHCR said more than 200,000 refugees have returned to Afghanistan this year.

Due to a large number of refugees returning to Afghanistan, the UNHCR has recently inaugurated a second repatriation center in Azakhel, on the outskirts of Peshawar, to maintain the momentum of the process.